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Monday, November 17, 2008

HOW TO GET TO 100% NEW ENERGY (DR. HERMANN SCHEER)

Dr. Hermann Scheer, a pioneering giant in the solar energy world, presented his thoughts on how to make the transformation to a New Energy world. He was not speaking hypothetically. He is the man who led the movement that transformed Germany - a country with the solar resources of Juneau, Alaska - into the world leader in solar energy capacity.

Scheer said the world is at a watershed moment. As a result of a cascading set of crises, “…conventional energy costs will go up more and more…” from rising fuel and environmental costs. New Energy costs “…can only go down by mass production of the technologies and improvement of the technology.”

Scheer is an advocate of political action to grow New Energy. He led the movement in Germany to create the world’s first feed-in tariff (FiT), a guarantee to producers of New Energy that all the electricity they generate will purchased for the grid at above retail prices over an extended 15- or 20- year period.

Scheer’s appearance at UCLA was facilitated byThe Renewables 100 Policy Institute, a think tank created to provide research and and analysis to validate the possibility of achieving a 100% New Energy world. The first question, of course, is when can 100% New Energy happen?

Scheer seems to think it can’t happen too soon: “Each postponed year will become very expensive. The idea to wait is wrong.”

Scheer is no innocent idealist. He made the FiT happen in Germany through hardball politics. He not only understands that government policy is the key, he also understands achieving the right government policy is very difficult.

The logic: New Energy provides a range of extraordinary benefits to relieve the cascade of crises the world now faces. It is practical. It offers "macroecononomic benefits" in the form of energies that don't destroy or pollute.

The obstacle: Energy production is in the hands of corporate giants for whom there is no apparent benefit in transitioning away from their Old Energy businesses to a New Energy world. There is no "microeconomic benefit" to them.

Scheer: “The political art is to introduce policies which make it possible to transform the macroeconomic benefit into a microeconomic incentive. Then you have the dynamic…”

Understanding where the microeconomic incentive is requires real knowledge of energy.

Scheer began his talk by describing how antiquated the world’s current energy system is: “We are living with the technology of the 18th century…” Yet, he said almost sadly, probably from having said it so many times, the sun every day provides 15,000 times the energy the world needs.

He outlined the 7 cascading crises the world faces: (1) The climate crisis, (2) the crisis of dwindling conventional energy supplies, (3) the crisis of growing deprivation in the 3rd world, (4) the nuclear energy crisis of dwindling uranium supplies and weapons proliferation, (5) the water crisis, (6) the health crisis from pollution and failing water resources, and (7) the agricultural crisis from failing water resources and poverty.

This led to a description of Germany’s FiT, the key to the microeconomic benefits. It created the most successful New Energy market in the world, generated 250,000 new jobs in less than 10 years and adds more than 3,000 megawatts to Germany’s New Energy capacity every year.

And the FiT has Germany on track to obtain ALL its power from New Energy sources in another quarter of a century.

Scheer: “There is no reason why not.”

Dr. Scheer stressed how it requires a “…shift of ownership, a new calculation, a new paradigm…” to find the willingness to make the transition because it is necessary to appreciate how the "human value" in New Energy also represents microeconomic benefit.

In the face of Old Energy powers that have no incentive to change, it is vital to understand that the economic benefits of New Energy include the savings from not fighting oil wars and not fighting water wars, from not building and rebuilding and protecting pipelines and from not paying the enormous health costs of illness and disease created by dirty coal and dirty transportation and dwindling polluted water supplies.

Scheer: “We should not think only about costs because there is no society without human value…”

New Energy, Scheer stressed repeatedly, provides human value. It is a trick of Old Energy “…to make the discussion only an economic debate and the wrong energy debate and to organize a fog over the debate…”

In a generous question-and-answer session following the talk, Scheer made a few random and interesting final points.

Arnold: He intimated that he had personal knowledge of California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger favors the FiT. But the Governator, Scheer implied, needs political cover from FiT advocates.

Cap-and-trade: He called the cap-and-trade emissions trading concept “the most inflexible and weak instrument…” to fight greenhouse gas emissions. He offered statistics to back up his contention that Germany's FiT was a more effective tool but said the most effective way to fight emissions would be a “pollution tax” (if it was politically obtainable) that taxed pollution instead of energy.

FutureBabble: He rejected space-based solar and was dubious about hydrogen.

"Clean: coal: Finally, he could not have been more unequivocal about “clean” coal: “…I would not spend one penny for that. I believe it is a fake.”

WHENBased on the success of the German FiT and the rate of growth of New Energy in Germany, it is speculated the country could get 100% of its power from New Energy sources within 25 years.Scheer’s presentation was November 16.

WHERE- Germany’s FiT was the first in 1st in world. There are now 40 nations and states with one.- Scheer spoke at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The event was sponsored by the UCLA Institute for Sustainable Engineering (ISE), the UCLA Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dept (MAE) in the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SAES), the UCLA Institute for the Environment (IoE) and UCLA Leaders in Sustainability (LiS) in UCLA's Anderson School of Business.

WHY- Germany’s FiT was originally named The Law for the Priority of Renewable Energy.- Besides a guaranteed, above-retail rate for an extended predetermined period of time, the FiT requires that New Energy have prioritized access to the web and must be paid without distinction of provider.- Germany’s FiT is credited with creating the most successful New Energy market in the world, generating 250,000 new jobs in less than 10 years, adding more than 3,000 megawatts of New Energy capacity yearly.- Points about the 7 cascading crises:(1) It is a mistake to think about the energy crisis as only a climate problem because then the logical conclusion is that nuclear energy is the solution.(2) The energy availability crisis is also known as “peak” oil, “peak” natural gas, “peak” coal and “peak” uranium.(3) The 3rd world crisis cannot be isolated from west. 40+ countries pay more for oil imports than they earn. Their per capita earning is 5% to 8% of the per capita income in the west. Their only chance is to shift to indigenous energy sources and they world must bring the technology to them to do so.(4) The nuclear crisis will not be solved by building new nuclear plant daily for 50 years b/c uranium supplies are running out. And the weapons proliferation in such a plan is deeply threatening.(5) The water crisis involves 3 groups of water consumers: cities, agriculture, and conventional energy systems. There is no way to eliminate the 1st 2 but the last can be replaced nu New Energy. (1 kw nuc = 3.2 liter water, 1 kw-hr coal = 2.6 liter water). Wind and solar don’t use water.(6) The health crisis is to some extent the product of pollution, poverty and compromised water supplies.(7) The agricultural crisis is a product of the water crisis and the 3rd world crisis.

QUOTES- “My main recommendation to Governors is, ‘Don’t believe anymore conventional energy experts.’ They don’t understand. They speak about single energies. They don’t understand energy flows. It is a kind of blinders…”- “The political art is to introduce policies which make it possible to transform the macroeconomic benefit into a microeconomic incentive. Then you have the dynamic…”- “The real question is, we live in our daily activities from a marginal energy source…The problem in this century is, do we continue to depend on these marginal sources? If this will be the case, then civilization will become marginalized…”

1 Comments:

Thanks Herman.Very good blog. It captures more than what I was able to gather at the lecture. Good work !

Just one point: the name of the university is 'University of California Los Angeles,' or UCLA. The Renewables 100 Policy Institute were the facilitators for the event, not the sponsors. The event was sponsored by the UCLA ISE, the Institute for Sustainable Engineering (a planned institution www.ise.seas.ucla.edu), UCLA MAE, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dept in SEAS, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, UCLA IoE, the Institute for the Environment and UCLA LiS, Leaders in Sustainability in UCLA Anderson School of Business. It takes a village !

Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades by Mark S. Friedman

OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades, the second volume of Herman K. Trabish’s retelling of oil’s history in fiction, picks up where the first book in the series, OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction, left off. The new book is an engrossing, informative and entertaining tale of the Roaring 20s, World War II and the Cold War. You don’t have to know anything about the first historical fiction’s adventures set between the Civil War, when oil became a major commodity, and World War I, when it became a vital commodity, to enjoy this new chronicle of the U.S. emergence as a world superpower and a world oil power.

As the new book opens, Lefash, a minor character in the first book, witnesses the role Big Oil played in designing the post-Great War world at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Unjustly implicated in a murder perpetrated by Big Oil agents, LeFash takes the name Livingstone and flees to the U.S. to clear himself. Livingstone’s quest leads him through Babe Ruth’s New York City and Al Capone’s Chicago into oil boom Oklahoma. Stymied by oil and circumstance, Livingstone marries, has a son and eventually, surprisingly, resolves his grievances with the murderer and with oil.

In the new novel’s second episode the oil-and-auto-industry dynasty from the first book re-emerges in the charismatic person of Victoria Wade Bridger, “the woman everybody loved.” Victoria meets Saudi dynasty founder Ibn Saud, spies for the State Department in the Vichy embassy in Washington, D.C., and – for profound and moving personal reasons – accepts a mission into the heart of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. Underlying all Victoria’s travels is the struggle between the allies and axis for control of the crucial oil resources that drove World War II.

As the Cold War begins, the novel’s third episode recounts the historic 1951 moment when Britain’s MI-6 handed off its operations in Iran to the CIA, marking the end to Britain’s dark manipulations and the beginning of the same work by the CIA. But in Trabish’s telling, the covert overthrow of Mossadeq in favor of the ill-fated Shah becomes a compelling romance and a melodramatic homage to the iconic “Casablanca” of Bogart and Bergman.

Monty Livingstone, veteran of an oil field youth, European WWII combat and a star-crossed post-war Berlin affair with a Russian female soldier, comes to 1951 Iran working for a U.S. oil company. He re-encounters his lost Russian love, now a Soviet agent helping prop up Mossadeq and extend Mother Russia’s Iranian oil ambitions. The reunited lovers are caught in a web of political, religious and Cold War forces until oil and power merge to restore the Shah to his future fate. The romance ends satisfyingly, America and the Soviet Union are the only forces left on the world stage and ambiguity is resolved with the answer so many of Trabish’s characters ultimately turn to: Oil.

Commenting on a recent National Petroleum Council report calling for government subsidies of the fossil fuels industries, a distinguished scholar said, “It appears that the whole report buys these dubious arguments that the consumer of energy is somehow stupid about energy…” Trabish’s great and important accomplishment is that you cannot read his emotionally engaging and informative tall tales and remain that stupid energy consumer. With our world rushing headlong toward Peak Oil and epic climate change, the OIL IN THEIR BLOOD series is a timely service as well as a consummate literary performance.

Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction by Mark S. Friedman

"...ours is a culture of energy illiterates." (Paul Roberts, THE END OF OIL)

OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, a superb new historical fiction by Herman K. Trabish, addresses our energy illiteracy by putting the development of our addiction into a story about real people, giving readers a chance to think about how our addiction happened. Trabish's style is fine, straightforward storytelling and he tells his stories through his characters.

The book is the answer an oil family's matriarch gives to an interviewer who asks her to pass judgment on the industry. Like history itself, it is easier to tell stories about the oil industry than to judge it. She and Trabish let readers come to their own conclusions.

She begins by telling the story of her parents in post-Civil War western Pennsylvania, when oil became big business. This part of the story is like a John Ford western and its characters are classic American melodramatic heroes, heroines and villains.

In Part II, the matriarch tells the tragic story of the second generation and reveals how she came to be part of the tales. We see oil become an international commodity, traded on Wall Street and sought from London to Baku to Mesopotamia to Borneo. A baseball subplot compares the growth of the oil business to the growth of baseball, a fascinating reflection of our current president's personal career.

There is an unforgettable image near the center of the story: International oil entrepreneurs talk on a Baku street. This is Trabish at his best, portraying good men doing bad and bad men doing good, all laying plans for wealth and power in the muddy, oily alley of a tiny ancient town in the middle of everywhere. Because Part I was about triumphant American heroes, the tragedy here is entirely unexpected, despite Trabish's repeated allusions to other stories (Casey At The Bat, Hamlet) that do not end well.

In the final section, World War I looms. Baseball takes a back seat to early auto racing and oil-fueled modernity explodes. Love struggles with lust. A cavalry troop collides with an army truck. Here, Trabish has more than tragedy in mind. His lonely, confused young protagonist moves through the horrible destruction of the Romanian oilfields only to suffer worse and worse horrors, until--unexpectedly--he finds something, something a reviewer cannot reveal. Finally, the question of oil must be settled, so the oil industry comes back into the story in a way that is beyond good and bad, beyond melodrama and tragedy.

Along the way, Trabish gives readers a greater awareness of oil and how we became addicted to it. Awareness, Paul Roberts said in THE END OF OIL, "...may be the first tentative step toward building a more sustainable energy economy. Or it may simply mean that when our energy system does begin to fail, and we begin to lose everything that energy once supplied, we won't be so surprised."

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